The HootSuite dashboard is packed with features and tools designed to simplify your social media management. To help you get acquainted with the functionality (or just give you a refresher), here’s a #HootTip highlighting a handy way to use the dashboard.

Geo-Locate Your Searches

For many businesses, connecting with a local audience is key to creating awareness and expanding their customer base. But as millions of social messages are sent daily, how do businesses find the messages near them? With geo-located searches, that’s how.

HootSuite feature geo-located searches allows businesses to filter searches according to distance to view only the social messages sent from potential customers close by. Refine your search to industry related terms or brand mentions based on your location.

Here’s How it Works:

Social media is a great place to start looking for new customers or begin spreading local awareness for your business’ services. Here’s how it works:

Enter your search term in the Twitter search field. For example, someone looking for more dental patients could type “#dentist.”

Click the crosshairs icon on the right side of the search field to find local search results.

The Twitter search stream will automatically refresh showing local search results within a 25 km radius from your current dashboard location.

Try it out and see just how many people are talking about your business or industry. Tap into the conversation to start getting your brand noticed and build trust with potential customers. By filtering your results you’ll save time and get the most from your outreach efforts.

Keep an eye out for a new #HootTip each week – they’re short and sweet so that you, your friends and your followers, will be HootSuite experts in no time.

Geo-located searches allows businesses to filter searches according to a radius from their own current location. This means that in the quick search field, when clicking the crosshairs icon, your location will be automatically imported so you can view results from other users within a 25km radius of your current location. There isn't an option to choose a target location other than your own at this time.

Should you have more questions, please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter @Hootsuite_Help!

@Hootsuite_Help_Desk@The GoCat Company same here! i need to see tweets with certain keywords in a more southern part of california.. this feature would come in handy Hootsuite. Hope youre working on it!

@saposapien Hi there! Thanks for reaching out. As it turns out this feature is not currently available with Facebook. I invite you to submit your ideas to our Feedback channel, where fellow Hootsuite users can vote on which features to add to a future release. We will then be able to gauge interest amongst other Hootsuite users -carefully considering this idea for a future release. The link can be accessed here: feedback.hootsuite.com.

Thank you for reaching out to the Hootsuite Team via our Blog. Our Development Team has identified, and is working to resolve an issue with geo-located search streams.

My apologies for any inconvenience caused by this. If you would like to be notified as soon as there is an update or resolution available, please reach out to us on Twitter @Hootsuite_Help or via our Facebook Page here, https://www.facebook.com/hootsuite and we would be happy to create a support ticket for you.

I had geo-located searches set up for my search terms that worked fine. They no longer are pulling up results - but when i remove the geocode I can see tweets from people using my search terms, that are well within the range of the area I set. I reset the geocodes again using your instructions here but it still doesn't work. What changed?

@HootSuite_Help_Desk@HethAlex@Hootsuite_Help I'm having the same issue as @HethAlex. I can view it with location data in the quick search bar, but as soon as I save it it removes the location data. When I follow the typical steps using the geocode: in the search it brings back 0 results for every term even if I bring the distance up to 100km.

As it turns out, this functionality has changed a bit. We've adjusted this post as a result of your diligence. Thank you for bringing this to our attention

As such, to create a geo-located Search Stream, just hit the "+ Add Stream" button in your Dashboard, click the "Search" tab, fill out your search query, and then hit the target icon in the bottom-left of the screen. More detailed instructions can be seen in the link Sharin provided above:

As it turns out, this functionality has changed a bit. We've adjusted this post as a result of your diligence. Thank you for bringing this to our attention

As such, to create a geo-located Search Stream, just hit the "+ Add Stream" button in your Dashboard, click the "Search" tab, fill out your search query, and then hit the target icon in the bottom-left of the screen. More detailed instructions can be seen in the link Sharin provided above:

This is something Hootsuite really needs to improve on. The current system is pretty poor. I'm in the UK and for one account I want to find tweets from people in the US or Canada. What would be wrong with "country:US OR Canada" rather than messing around with geo codes and distances??

@OldhamCoSchools Hi there. For quickest response to all support issues, please visit https://hootsuite.com/help. Once there you can submit a ticket or consult the available Help Desk Articles. Thanks for your patience.

Is there a way of generating search results that only refer to tweets sent from a specific country (e.g. sent from Switzerland)? The geo-located search is too detailed for me, since I'm looking for nation-wide tweets, not just those sent from 25km away...

Nice post Ashley. For local service providers using Internet marketing to reach local markets, geo-located search is a really powerful capability. Used in conjunction with inbound marketing to generate and nurture local leads, users can get a strong boost to their local demand generation efforts. Though based on the thread here, it sounds like there are issues being addressed. It's definitely worth the effort to get geo-location searches to work. Thanks for sharing.

The geolocation feature is great, but I seem to be having an issue. While our coordinates are correct (I double checked on google maps) we seem to be getting a large amount of UK results. We're located near Manchester, NH, so I'm curious if we are somehow getting linked to Manchester, UK?

This would be great if it actually worked consistently. I tried it several times during a Hootsuite workshop this morning and it didn't work for me at all (I was the instructor, no less) and only one of the students was able to actually get a local search out of it. Very frustrating that we can't depend on it to work. And the Hootsuite Twitter accounts have been NO HELP.

I really like the Geolocation search feature, but I can only seem to get it to work in Firefox, doesn't seem to work in Internet Explorer. Is there a setting within IE that needs ticking for this to work?

Geo located search is a great idea. If you are a local business you can target users in your area/town/city. This is also useful if you have for example a shopping website and you are selling products that may be used in an certain area.